Partitioning internal drive and reinstalling Lion

[Dirty Harry]

I use my computer for video editing. I know the best thing is to have an external hard drive to store media. But I've also found useful, when for different reasons I could only use an internal drive, and this one was big enough, to format it in two partitions, using one for systems/apps and the second one only for video media. This would let me reformat the video partition every time I started a new project making sure it's "clean" and video data unfragmented. I know it's still only one drive, but it feels like two and it worked for me...

Now I was hoping to do this same thing with my new MBP 13" 750 GB. Since the hard drive is pretty big, I was hoping to take around all of my video files on this internal partition (I expected to have it 500 GB), avoiding an external drive and making the whole thing more portable. But Lion is making this idea very difficult if possible at all.

Booting in Recovery Mode, disk utility won't let me unmount/format/partition, it keeps saying it can not dismount the drive, ok, I know I should do it from an external drive. Booting from an usb drive, with Lion Recovery Disk Assistant Utility installed, then using Disk Utility, won´t let me unmount and format the internal drive either. Also I read about making a bootable flash drive, but I have no Lion installer downloaded, since my Lion copy is the one that came with the laptop, so I don´t know how this could be done. I just MISS an installer DVD with disk utility, like it used to be.

I thought of using Boot Camp, not to install Windows, just to be able to have a separate partition, but Lion's version is different too.

Obviously, I could forget the idea and use my drive as it is, without partitioning. But as I said, I enjoyed partitioning my internal drive as I wanted it to be.

If someone thinks of some way I would appreciate!

Thank you

 

[HandySam]

To partition your drive you will need to make a Lion USB-stick. You can do this by re-downloading Lion installer from Mac App store (hold option key while browsing towards Lion installer in MAS). Then you need to extract InstallESD.dmg from the package. Restore this to a USB-stick (with disk utility).

Then you can boot from it and you will be able to repartition your drive. You will have to re-install Lion though.

Hope it helps

 

[Dirty Harry]

To partition your drive you will need to make a Lion USB-stick. You can do this by re-downloading Lion installer from Mac App store (hold option key while browsing towards Lion installer in MAS). Then you need to extract InstallESD.dmg from the package. Restore this to a USB-stick (with disk utility).

Then you can boot from it and you will be able to repartition your drive. You will have to re-install Lion though.

Hope it helps

I didn´t originally buy Lion, It came with my laptop, so I am not able to re-download it from the App Store, I'd need to buy it again, wich I don´t want to do, obviously. What I can do is reinstall it using Recovery Mode, what this does is installing Lion from the internet (amazing), but not actually downloading a separate installer that I could put on a USB stick, I think. This Recovery Mode won´t let me partition.

I don´t know if those who buy a new Mac with Lion already installed have a way of making a Lion USB stick.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Dirty Harry]

After reading this post https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1196608/ and realizing how complicated/dangerous this partition thing could become, I think am abandoning my partition project.

Maybe creating a big virtual disk image in disk utility would be as useful as partitioning for what I need.

*UPDATE*
Just found this link:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...ge_martin.html

I think it will work as good for Media Composer. I love this disk image idea for video projects. Much more flexible than partitioning!